Wireless communication devices, such as smartphones, laptop computers and the like, are enabled by some communication protocols to establish connections in the absence of a dedicated access point such as a wireless router. For example, the Wi-Fi Direct standard established within the IEEE 802.11 family of wireless protocols enables communication between devices in the absence of dedicated access points. Such connections may be referred to as peer-to-peer connections, although typically in implementing such connections, one of the participating devices may be assigned a “group owner” role, and thus provide certain functionality that would conventionally be provided by a dedicated access point. The performance of the group owner role carries an additional computational burden, however, and performance of the connection may suffer when the device assigned as group owner is unable to support that computational burden.
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The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.